Problem-Solving for Life

Although all of 21st Century Skills are all important, I believe that the problem-solving skill is the most critical.  Problem-solving is a skill that is used your entire life.  No matter the path a student takes in life, there will always be problems that arise.  These problems are going to be different for everyone and each person will have to learn how to deal with the problems in a way that works for them.  Think of all the problems that we have to deal with everyday, and also the problems that plagued us as we were going through school.  Some of the problems were simple as choosing the first car we would buy to more complex problems we deal with as adults like balancing your family budget to meet the needs of your family. At a young age students need to experience problems and have opportunities of  dealing with them.

Integrating problem-solving with my Technology Infusion plan seemed easy to me, but after I started teaching my class this semester, I realized that problem-solving is a skill they still need.  For my students, the problem many of them had was both developing a timeline for their project and also just choosing how they were going to best display their project and present it to the class.

Assessing 21st Century skills is not as easy as just giving a multiple choice test.  Assessing problem-solving will be difficult, but I feel that this can be done in a variety of ways. First off, students will need to develop their timeline and keep track of their progress .  If they are not staying on track, they will need to make adjustments so they will still be able to complete their project within their timeline.  Another way to assess problem-solving skills is to give the students some real-life situations that will have to deal with their lives and have groups discuss what they feel is the best way to deal with the situation.  Since the class I teach is Communication Arts, listening to their discussion and also them sharing their problem and solution(s) in their blogs

All of the 21st Century skills are important, and each person will have their own thought on what they believe is the most important skill.  Problem-solving is the skill that I believe is most critical since it is something that will be used quite a bit throughout everyone's life.  I know I deal with problems daily.

Philosophy of Education

William Butler Yeats once said, “Education is not the filling of a pail, but the lighting of a fire.”  That quote sums up my philosophy of education. As a teacher, I always wanted to inspire my students to want to be life-long learners.  Yes, I wanted the students to be successful with their grades and standardized tests, but I wanted them to be driven on their own.  Learning needed to be student-centered, because otherwise the students learn to dislike education and lose their inspiration.  Just like sports, if a child does not have a good experience while playing basketball and they have a coach who makes basketball not fun, the child may learn to dislike basketball. I want students to learn from me, but also develop a love a learning.

Integrating technology into the curriculum can help with making education more enjoyable for students.  Students have so many opportunities to learn on their own, they just need to be given the tools and encouraged to not be afraid to try.   I still remember one particular teacher I had in 5th grade, Mrs. Cass, that really inspired me to focus on getting students to want to be life-long learners.  She allowed us to choose novels that we worked on in small groups or individually.  We then had many choices to choose from to show our learning throughout the novel (we could even choose our own project with her approval!). It was the first time that I felt independent and that was the first time I learned to enjoy reading and wanted to become a teacher. I can only imagine the choices we would have had in her class if we would have had some type of devices available to us (We had one traveling computer in our school at that time).

Today, the opportunities for learning are limitless. Students have access to many resources and devices.  Problem is, they do not always know how to use these resources to do more than have fun.  I want to show my students how to take charge of their learning and become life-long learners.  Technology is the key. If we give the students the tools and work with them on using these tools.  Finally, we allow the students to do amazing things!

Welcome!

After completing the first Five-Star course last year, I was excited to hear that those of us who took the class would be invited to take this course. The was the first course I took that was entirely online. The thing that I am most excited about with this class is having the opportunity to connect with educators throughout the state and learn ways they are integrating technology into their classrooms, especially if they are not a 1:1 environment.

With all the knowledge that is being brought to this class, I am not sure what I can bring to this class that others will already be bringing to the table. The only thing that I can bring will be my experience.  I have been in education for 16 years and have taken many roles over those years.  My first 9 years consisted of working various levels as a classroom teacher.  The last 6 I have been in the role of Technology Director. My role in that position has changed A LOT over the past 4 years.  I started out doing more project planning and professional development and now I have added more hats from software installing and hardware repair to Corporation Test Coordinator and High Ability Coordinator.  I have now seen a wide variety of dealing with technology.

With all these great minds coming together to participate in this Technology Integration class, I know that I am going to have to take time reflecting on what everyone has to share and listen to their ideas, beliefs, and opinions.  More time needs to be spent learning what others have done.  Many who are taking this course have the luxury of every student having a device. Unfortunately not all of our students have this access(although some of my teachers do and they do have access to computer labs), so hopefully I will get the opportunity to learn from both sides.  I want to be able to take what I learn from this course and work with my teachers so they can grow too (I know that sounds cheesy).